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Author: Bonnie

Bonnie Koenig has been a licensed acupuncturist since 1999. She is passionate about helping people find real healing and real health. In the process she keeps asking about our attitudes towards sickness and health. Only by being clear on what sickness is, can we ever find health.

One thing I wish I had done was keep this blog updated more but I feel like there’s so much blogging to do and not nearly enough time for writing anything that I have to skip something. So here goes, with only one other blog post this year, I have my goals.

How’d I do last year?

Attend Superstars. This is a different workshop with different names in Colorado. I am signed up and plane ticket is purchased so I just need to go. ATTENDED AND SIGNED UP FOR 2018!

Writeat least one short story a month and publish at least one short storya month on the months I do not publish a book or novella I PUBLISHEDSOMETHING EACH MONTH BUT IN THE LATTER PART OF THE YEAR, DUE TO A CHALLENGE, I MISSED DOING TWO SHORT STORIES, ALTHOUGH I WROTE MORE THAN 12 SHORT STORIES THIS YEAR

Publish three longer works of fiction or non-fiction (books or novellas) DONE-ONE WHISPER NOVEL AND TWO TEENAGE FAIRY GODMOTHER BOOKS

Find a social arena in town ONCE AGAIN THIS WAS A PLACE I FELL DOWN AT DOING

Get my freebie set up and build my mailing list to increase profitability BUILT MAILING LIST TO ABOUT 1200 PEOPLE. WORKING WITH BOOK FUNNEL NOW

Attend at least one writing convention, either GenCon, DragonCon, and/or BoucherCon. NOPE AGAIN, MISSED OUT ON THIS

Take a writing classes online (from Dean or somewhere else). DONE–TOOK TWO OF THE PROFICIENCY CLASSES WITH DEAN AND KRIS

Blog regularly on Bonnie Elizabeth’s site. Twice a month minimum but stretch is weekly. SO FAR IT’S BEEN WEEKLY!

Stretch goals:

Do a collection of my works

Get three full novels out DONE

Set up a Bundle of my own on Bundle Rabbit (SETTING ONE UP, NOT PUBLISHED UNTIL JANUARY)

Overall, I’d say I did fairly well on the goals. Not perfect, but there always needs to be a stretch right?

For 2018 my goals are:

Publish 6 or 7 new books (6 of these are written and just need to be published)

Write 120 short stories and get 90% of them out and in the mail.

Write at least 3 novels this year

Blog regularly at my Bonnie Elizabeth site

Blog at least semi-regularly on this site

Revamp this website

Attend a con

Work on increasing author visibility and author income via networking, ads, audience building.

Yes, I learned this history going to acupuncture school. What I didn’t learn? I didn’t learn that the Panthers were there for the specific reason to block the methadone trucks so that acupuncture could be used instead. That’s important. It’s important because it suddenly becomes a story of how important Black people are to the history of this medicine in the United States. As acupuncturists, we need to remember that.

It’s important to share because too often, we only hear about how white people worked hard. In this case, it was the Black community that did the work and they should be recognized for it. Their work has changed the options for many people who are not getting help with traditional western medicine (I used the word “traditional” deliberately).

Go read the article. Read about how acupuncture got started in the United States. Read about the first people using the medicine.

If you’re wondering why this took me so long to write, let’s just say I was really really mad about not knowing that one small detail about the Panthers. It took me this long to not spend acres of blog space ranking on that fact.

I didn’t do quite as well with my goals for 2016. Some of it was health issues, getting really sick after traveling but to be honest I wasn’t quite as focused. So how did I do?

Attend Anthology Workshop in Lincoln City. Wouldn’t miss this for anything. DONE! And once again it was great. I sold 3 stories.

Write two short stories a month and get at least one of them ready to send out. A stretch goal: write one a mystery and one fantasy and get both out to publishers Basic done, not stretch. I did get at least one short story finished and I believe I got at least one polished to go out to editors.

Publish 3 books (two fiction and one either fiction or non-fiction) I got one fiction and one non-fiction. This was a huge fall down because of illness, both mine and later my editors. I should get the third done into January.

Self-publish at least 6 of my short stories. A stretch is to publish a collection as well. I self-published 6 short stories. I did not get a collection but I haven’t got a collection of stories that fit together. On the bonus side, I did get to utilize Bundle Rabbit so did get some invites to those as well.

Find a social arena in town. Didn’t quite get to this.

Take a class that is not from Dean and Kris Went to the Writer’s Police Academy

Once again I fell down on the social goals. I did get most goals done but not the stretch goals. It’s too bad. I would have liked to have gotten at least one stretch goal this year.

Goals for 2017

Attend Superstars. This is a different workshop with different names in Colorado. I am signed up and plane ticket is purchased so I just need to go.

Writeat least one short story a month and publish at least one short storya month on the months I do not publish a book or novella

Publish three longer works of fiction or non-fiction (books or novellas)

Find a social arena in town

Get my freebie set up and build my mailing list to increase profitability

So I have a few more goals this year than last year but some of these are smaller and easier to handle. I’d go back to the Coast for Dean and Kris workshops but Superstars and then writing conventions will eat into that money so it’s not on the list. Back in 2018.

The focus this year with everything on my goals is increasing visibility and profitability on my works already out there. That means I will again be less focused on novel publishing, which is why I’m allowing myself to consider the publication of shorter works rather than just novels. Plus one of the things next in the pipeline is a shorter work and I’m not sure I have a novel that will be ready to be finished by year end, so we’ll see!

I’ve read a few articles about the push back against the “magic cure.” You know, the magical one thing you have to do to keep from ever getting sick and, so this implication goes, dying. Eat paleo or vegan or vegetarian or whatever. Put an ice cube on GV 14 (which gets a big old WTF from me and most other acupuncturists). Take tumeric. Drink 7 smoothies an hour after waking up.

I made the last one up. How many got it? How many thought it was real?

Let’s talk about this. I was reading the Cult of Perfect Motherhood, the blog of a woman who is battling metastatic breast cancer. She has people telling her to do these things all the time. And there is the implication, you aren’t getting better because you didn’t do this one thing, whatever that one thing is.

Here’s the truth. No one knows her body better than her. Her doctor comes closest, having medical knowledge and well as a thorough medical knowledge of her body. Yes, he has biases because he went to school. It’s possible he did a lot of study to challenge those biases and may have found reasons to either dismiss the conflicting evidence or decided to incorporate it into his practice. Or maybe not. The thing is, how many of those people rushing up to her on the internet telling her what she needs to do to heal have any real medical knowledge at all?

Here’s the thing. Tumeric, for instance, is a minor herb in the pharmacopia I learned about in acupuncture school. It has certain energetic properties that mean that for some people it might be protective against cancer. There are many people, however, for whom it won’t be protective. And once you have cancer, particularly metastatic cancer, it’s efficacy is lowered. It’s not likely that the only reason someone got cancer was due to a deficiency of tumeric.

We do not live in a vacuum where we can magically keep all illness and death at bay. Illness happens. It happens to vegetarians, alternative care providers, paleo afficianados, and to fitness enthusiasts. It happens to fat people and to skinny people, tall people and short people. It happens to people who live on smoothies and those who live on bone broth. It happens to people who eschew anything but locally grown organic foods. It happens to people who live on fast food.

Health is a balance. I get sick and then I get well is the optimum balance. My immune system fights something off. But sometimes things overwhelm our immune system and we need to go with what works. What works for my body might not work for yours. There are any number of tiny factors that make a decision on what steps to take when fighting for one’s life that the idea that just doing one miracle thing is ridiculous. Someone fighting a life threatening illness has to make a dozen decisions that they may feel ill equipped to handle. But they have to balance out many medical options, traditional and alternative, against their own values, hopes and dreams for quality and quantity of life. There are risks in any decision. The question becomes, which decision can I live with most easily if it’s the wrong decision and I don’t make it?

We hate looking at death and illness. There’s judgment in many of those posts. It makes those people who are sick, “other”. But illness and death could come to any of us. Fukishima carried radiation across the world, hitting the west coast hard. No one living there escaped that completely. No matter how they ate. They had to breathe and the poison was in the air. We do live in a polluted world. Here’s the good news. Our bodies are adaptable. If we trust them, maybe we’ll be fine. Maybe we won’t, but our knowledge and understanding is far less adaptable than our bodies because our bodies are working even before we can see and measure the problem. They’re amazing that way.

Adapting won’t be surviving for everyone. Success doesn’t always mean life at any cost. That’s a hard one, isn’t it? It’s our fear that we won’t survive that keeps us reading and sharing the stories about the miracle cure, whatever it is.

So this is a post I’ve been thinking about for sometime and I’ve re-written it a dozen or more times because it sort of comes out as a smug “rules for friends” on Facebook and that’s not what I want to write. It’s my way of thinking about friends on Facebook and it doesn’t have to be anyone else’s. The great thing about Facebook is that you get to make it what you want in terms of socializing or promoting or a business or being accessible. In that sense everyone should have a plan that works for them.

Over the years, I’ve realized that there are certain things I don’t want to see on my timeline. The recent comments that many people were making about asking those who supported Donald Trump to unfriend them troubled me. First, there was the question of whether I only wanted to be friends with people who thought like me. And honestly, no. Because some of the best friends I have are really different from me. Diversity is a great thing.

On the other hand, Trump’s comments are really, really hateful and scary. In fact, sadly, the only thing Dick Cheney and I agree on is that Trump would make a horrible president. Do I want to be friends with people who would support someone who wants to take the United States down the same road as Germany went down in World War II? Or even that the US went down in WWII by imprisoning American citizens in internment camps because they happened to look like the people who attacked us? When does unfriending someone limit my exposure to other ideas and when is it taking a moral stand?

I don’t know what’s going on in anyone’s head. I can read what they post on Facebook. And I realized that this is less about controlling them but controlling what I am connected to and exposed to.

I don’t want to see pictures of animal abuse. However, I understand why some people share those things. I understand they are able to wade into a really horrible situation and try and make sense of it in a way I cannot any longer. I don’t want to see that. Unfortunately I do know it happens and I respect and applaud the people willing to help. I’ll stay friends with them but I’ll unfollow the pages that they share that show pictures like that. If I have to, I’ll unfollow them but remain connected to them in the background because their heart is in the right place.

I don’t want to see images and status updates that denigrate, dehumanize, or demonize a person or groups of people. I realize that sharing many articles, some of which are great articles if you can get beyond the headline, means that sometimes we share hate. If the intention of the sharer is about raising awareness of a horrible issue, that’s something I’m okay with in my feed. Issues come up. I believe in personal growth and I’m willing to be challenged on some ways of thinking.

If the article is just tearing down a person or group of people, I’m not interested. In fact, if someone that I’m friends with posts articles that mostly do this, they will probably be unfriended. I might just hide them from my timeline, but if I go back and everything continues to remain negative and hate-filled, I’ll unfriend.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to participate in denigrating or dehumanizing anyone. I’m not perfect. I’ll probably fail in that as a one hundred percent rule, but I want to minimize that. I want to limit my exposure to people spreading hatred and I think it’s a far better use of the space I have for hatred to learn about ways of stopping it.

As for friends in the background, there’s a point at which I don’t even want any ties and connections to that sort of hatred even if it doesn’t show up in my newsfeed. It’s like having friends that gossip behind your back. I don’t want that.

So, do I stay friends with people who support Donald Trump? What if they rarely post anything political?

As I said, my standards on Facebook are about diversity, humanity and being challenged. If they aren’t posting things that are hateful and as one supporter told me, “I don’t agree with everything he says,” when challenged about his stance on Muslims, I’m currently not unfriending them.

It wouldn’t change their political stance. I mean, when was the last time someone rethought their political stance because a near stranger unfriended them on Facebook? If anything, it would consolidate their position of “rightness” and my position of “wrongness” because I just wasn’t willing to hear the truth.

Worse, it would make me exactly like Donald Trump and in that I would be a hypocrite. I wouldn’t be making Muslims and Hispanics “Other”. Instead I would be demonizing and making his supporters “Other.” I would be dividing the world every bit as much as Mr. Trump does.

I don’t want to be a divider. We have enough dividers in our world today.

I want to do something different. I want to unite people. I want to understand people. I want a world where there is so much love there’s no room for people to think like Mr. Trump. My stance won’t create that world, but maybe, just maybe I can offer enough love and peace in my little corner of it that we’ll be a tiny bit closer. At the very least, maybe there’ll be less divisiveness in my own spirit which creates a more peaceful world for me and those closest to me.

It doesn’t mean I accept Trump. As I said, if you fill my world with hate, I’ll unfriend you, and if you’re a politician I’ll work very hard to make sure you don’t have the power to spread that hatred. I’ll do that by voting, by marching, by writing letters to other powerful people, by sharing messages about how we are better people than he believes, how humanity is better than he believes.

I don’t understand how people that I’ve seen care for the sick, speak up for the voiceless, and offer support and generosity to people they’ve never met in person can support a man who spews so much hatred. I’ll never understand it and I hope it ends. But maybe, I can be that voice of their “Other” and let them see that the “Other” is not so scary that it has to be dehumanized to face. Or not. But at least I’ll be able to face my “Other” and do that. And at the end of the day, the only thing we can do is face what we can face.

I said it above. I’m “currently” not unfriending them. If this exercise becomes overwhelming or too harsh, I’m offering myself a way out. But for now, I’m not participating in the great divide.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see how well I did for my 2015 year long goals:

Attend Anthology Workshop in Lincoln City. This is mostly planned so I should be able to. The move will challenge me though. DONE and it was great! So great I also went to the Mystery Workshop there taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Send out more short stories. I want to get at least another five out and in circulation. I got out many more than five short stories and got some rejections. I’d like to do more next year.

Publish 4 books. I may not make this one, but I have two acupuncture books to get out there and I don’t want to fall behind on the Whisper series either, so two more of those. Two Whisper novels and two acupuncture books so done!

Find a social arena in my new town. This is often tough for me. I’m keeping it general, whether it’s joining the Unitarian Church or a volunteer group or finding a local book club. We’ll see. I did join the local author’s association. I have not, however, gotten out and joined anything where I’m social.

Trademark my publishing business (this in addition to changing over business licenses and such when I get to the new living area). Not even close.

Publish either an anthology of shorts or an omnibus edition of Whisper (or both). Got the omnibus edition of Whisper out but not short story collection.

So basically, I got the big ones done and the personal and publishing professional ones did not go as well.

Write two short stories a month and get at least one of them ready to send out. A stretch goal: write one a mystery and one fantasy and get both out to publishers

Publish 3 books (two fiction and one either fiction or non-fiction)

Self-publish at least 6 of my short stories. A stretch is to publish a collection as well.

Find a social arena in town.

Take a class that is not from Dean and Kris

I’m laughing at myself a little for the last one. I have a couple of ideas for classes that aren’t Dean and Kris classes so this might push me to do them.

I really want to get my name out there and I think having short stories published in other venues will help a lot. Even if I don’t get anything but rejections, I’ll have a better chance of being noticed with more items to my name. I’m focusing on fiction.

And like last year, I want to focus on other books besides Whisper. I’m still not happy with any non-Whisper books but who knows? Maybe I’ll write something brilliant that I want to get out there!

Untold: 12 Stories of Successful American Acupuncturists in the New Millennium which I put together with Jason Stein, LAc is now available on Amazon and other major retailers. It has it’s own website, Untold, which includes the raw video interviews that the acupuncturists gave to Jason.

The goal of the book was to bring hope to acupuncturists. Many people chose the field of acupuncture because they want to help people. They’re looking for ways to do this that get to the root of the health problems people have or they’re looking for a holistic medicine that sees mind and body as one. Upon graduation they have huge student loan debt and making a business successful feels overwhelming.

Starting a business is hard. It’s hard to keep going and it’s even harder when you are struggling to feed yourself and feel like no one is listening to you when you search out patients. Stories come up of how many acupuncturists don’t make it. The numbers are probably not so different from those in any small business but acupuncturists are healers, not business people, so as a profession we don’t have those numbers. Further, the debt taken on adds a further burden. The business of wanting to be a healer feels hopeless.

I wanted to remind people that there were practitioners who had made. There were people who were acupuncturists doing what they loved with acupuncture and making a living. The book branched out and talked to people who had moved on from the profession, from a place of success and not one of failure, to give practitioners ideas about retirement and ending their practice. Jason and I also found people who were inventing their own products and creating new paths.

Over all, I have hope that this book can reignite hope to those working so hard to further the profession.

Finally got my newest book Points to Ponder for the Acupuncturist in Business finished. It wasn’t that it was a long time to write. It’s been done for some time. But getting it edited and then formatted and published while moving took longer than I expected. But it’s finally here. It’s in ebook and print and available at your favorite retailers. Check it out.

There are people out there who insist that to have a good website and to show up well in Google, that you have to blog. I’m not sure if it’s true, but a lot of people worry. And certainly having a blog can help. Google likes websites that add and change content on a regular basis. This means that the sites are active. There’s also a bit of weight given to how much content a site has, which means that over the long term, blogging can add a lot of content to your site, even if you just write short notes. But there are a lot of factors in Google’s algorhims and they change regularly. There are blogs devoted to getting your website to show up on the top pages of Google. Many of them disagree with each other. They do agree that a blog helps but so does the length of time you’ve had your domain.

Not everyone has the time or inclination to write long blog posts. Some people find that short blog posts work well.

So what do I mean by a short blog post? Well, let’s suppose John Doe, LAc writes a great blog post on his blog Acupuncture Clinic of the USA about acupuncture and holistic healing. His words reflect my own ideas and I want to share.

What I can’t do:

I can’t copy and paste his article in its entirety

I can’t use the image that he used, unless I have purchased the same image from a stock photo site or I have permission from him to use his image.

I can’t claim his words as my own in any way shape or form.

What I can do:

I can write a short article that says something like this, “Check out this article from John Doe LAc on acupuncture and holistic healing (insert link to the article here). I agree with his points but as I am not a great writer, I thought I’d let him say this in his own passionate words. Let me know what you think of the article.”

I can also write a longer article that may quote the article by John Doe. If I do this, to be really safe, if I quote once sentence, I probably want to write a bit longer article so Google knows that I have something original to say about this.

I can add my own image to my site that goes with my own unique article.

What does this do for me or John Doe?

It helps John Doe because he’s got a nice targeted keyword link back to his site.

It helps me add content to my site with out the agony of writing a long article on a subject I am interested in but don’t want to write about.

The question at the end allows me to open a dialogue with my patients and clients.

Another example might be someone quoting a post about acupuncture and insomnia. Maybe a final note would be something like, “Many of you have mentioned friends or family members who have trouble sleeping. I see a lot of patients with this problem. Jane Doe wrote this amazing article on how it can help.(hyperlink to the article).”

When writing short posts like this, you can always find material via Google Notifications. You can set them to notify you about articles about acupuncture or health specialties that are of interest to you, your patients and potential patients.

Short posts aren’t as good as completely original content. Original content where you might write two hundred to five hundred words on a topic allows you to write longer articles that can get indexed for a particular keyword, which can then bring more traffic to your site. If you are not a specialist, this may or may not be helpful to you. After all, if you are across country, chances are, I’m still going to find someone local.

Short articles like this are a great way for acupuncturists to utilize posts that others have written without plagiarizing the writing. It allows you to offer something good for them, which is a link back. It means you can save most of your time for marketing strategies that work best for you.

Want to learn more about blogging? Go to the experts at CopyBlogger. They have a blog which has a ton of free useful information. They also have books and seminars and webinars for those who want more indepth learning. Whatever your learning style, they undoubtedly have a way to help you learn. And they’ve been around forever so they understand not just websites and SEO but the unique needs of someone writing a blog to sell their sevices.

Take 4 out of 6 virtual retreats with Mark Silver. I barely got that one. I managed the first four. The next two came after my husband got laid off and I was typically busy or frazzled or both for the last two. I missed that.

Take more classes with Dean Wesley Smith. I took two more online workshops and one lecture. It was an easy goal.

Join a writer’s organization. I joined the PNW Writer’s Association.

Write more shorts and submit four of them to publishers. I did that. I submitted at least two of them to every publisher that seemed a likely candidate. I didn’t get any published but I got them out there. I need to do more of this next year.

Deconstruct a book in a genre and write a book in that genre after that. I did that. I took apart a Juliet Blackwell cozy. And then I wrote a steampunk cozy. It wasn’t intended to be a cozy but I wrote it right after I deconstructed Blackwell’s book.

Write at least 5 more books. I did that, but barely. Many won’t see the light of day. Others might get out there in a few years.

Well, at the beginning of this year, my husband and I are moving across country. I am hopeful that this won’t set me back too much but it could and I need to allow for that. I also need to remember that goals are things I can do something about. Dean Wesley Smith mentions this in his goals section and it’s important for me to remember. I wanted to start getting my feet wet sending out stories to publishers and I did that. I can’t control if they get published. Chances are if I do more, I’ll have better odds so I need to keep at it. So what do I want for 2015?

Attend Anthology Workshop in Lincoln City. This is mostly planned so I should be able to. The move will challenge me though.

Send out more short stories. I want to get at least another five out and in circulation.

Publish 4 books. I may not make this one, but I have two acupuncture books to get out there and I don’t want to fall behind on the Whisper series either, so two more of those.

Find a social arena in my new town. This is often tough for me. I’m keeping it general, whether it’s joining the Unitarian Church or a volunteer group or finding a local book club. We’ll see.

Trademark my publishing business (this in addition to changing over business licenses and such when I get to the new living area).

Publish either an anthology of shorts or an omnibus edition of Whisper (or both).

I think I can do these. Some of those are things that will be clean up type things for the move and others move my writing and visibility along. I was pleased that I sold something every single month last year. I hope to do that again this next year or at least start selling *more* books. I took out an advertisement and while I didn’t sell as many based on the advertisement as I’d like, I did sell two more sets of the next two books, which suggests that people liked the series enough to try the next two. Which means I’m doing something right!

I’d also like to branch out into other writing projects. Whisper is great and I know those fans like it, but I want to write more pure fantasy and I have other ideas for urban fantasy and sort of cozy type mysteries. We’ll see what happens.